Showing Off the Husband

Mark had to disappear overnight last week. I hate it when he has to do that. He knows that. So he made a surprise for me that I found when I got home from work. Here's his note:

It reads (in case you can't read his ultra-neat handwriting): "Dearest Hillary, In case you get bored while I'm gone, I made you a 63-piece puzzle. If you want to do it, you might try doing it on a piece of cardboard or something, black/red side down, and then flip it over when you've finished. I lvoe you and hope you enjoy some Downton Abbey! Love, Mark"

Here's the puzzle laid out on the table:

And the puzzle completed (make sure you read through what he's written on the pieces if you can):

And the back of the puzzle:

I personally am terribly impressed and was smiling ear to ear while putting this together. Actually, it makes me feel a little guilty because I don't know if I could (or would) find the inclination to make something this detailed for Mark. I have a wonderful husband!

Settlers as Settlers

Mark and I wanted to have some fun.

We used to go on all kinds of dates. Even here in small-town Iowa we found date-like activities to do. One of my favorites:

Mark planned a sunrise date at a park where we could watch the sun come over the horizon while eating homemade bagels and drinking coffee from a thermos. Fun? Romantic? Reminiscent of the 'honeymoon stage?' Yes to all of the above.

But we haven't done much like that recently. We've been too busy thinking about grown-up problems like infertility and our earwig infestation. If you've ever heard of earwigs, you will understand why they might take one's attention away from romance:

In any case, we decided that we needed something fun, date-like. So we planned our Settlers as Settlers night, in which we ate food that early European settlers of the United States might have eaten and played the game of Settlers:

We even dressed up:

 Please don't comment on how I look more like a gypsy or vagabond than I do a settler. I was working with what I had.

We ate homemade pork and beans (but went easy on the pork, as I don't care much for meat) and skillet bread, which tasted basically like biscuits. We also had coffee because we read in the book pictured above that western cowboys drank strong black coffee with just about every meal. We Americans have a rich heritage of healthy eating.

All in all, a fun night! I enjoyed just being able to cherish being a couple again. Sometimes in the midst of wanting a baby I forget that I have a lot to be thankful for (example: see the one wearing the blue bandana).

A Midnight Clonking

I just about started bawling at the library circulation desk today.

I was sitting comfortably, innocently reading through our new children’s fiction books when I came to one called God Found Us You.  The stage is set for the story with a little white fox saying to a large red fox, “Mama, tell me again about the day I came home.”  

Mama Fox goes on to describe how she had been waiting a long time. She says that she prayed very hard but she still had to wait. (I started getting a little teary-eyed at this point.) Then she says that it was hard for her to see other mamas with their babies. (I started skimming so as not to burst into tears and alarm library patrons.) Suffice it to say, Mama Fox waits and waits and waits, and eventually God gives her a little fox, to whom she is telling this story.

As adoption books go, I wasn’t even that impressed with it. There’s not even any mention of the Papa Fox, although the title, God Found Us You, makes it sound like there should be another parent in the picture.

Why, you may ask, did an adoption story about foxes push me almost to tears?

Sleep deprivation. Sleep deprivation, my friends, is the answer.

I honestly can’t figure out why, but I haven’t slept well since being at Husband’s parents’ house last weekend. Last night I woke up around 3:00 a.m. and laid there, thinking about nothing in particular except the fact that I was very tired until about 4:00 a.m. All nights prior had involved some of the same insomnia, save Monday night.

On Monday night I had trouble falling asleep to begin with. When I finally did fall asleep, I slept fitfully until waking up suddenly to a loud WHAM! I clutched my head and groaned and noticed Husband clutching his head and groaning. We both mumbled an apology to the other before turning over to go back to sleep. The next morning, telling a co-worker about the collision, I was laughing, but at the time, I remember thinking, “Really? When I’m already having trouble sleeping?”

All in all, though, I’m glad Husband and I bonked heads because whenever I think about how our faces must have looked as we groaned and clutched our foreheads, and then both mumbled inarticulate words of apology, I can’t help but laugh. Anything that can afford me that much entertainment is well worth the midnight clonking.

In any case, I haven’t gotten enough sleep this week, and my emotions are proving it!

Second Doctor's Appointment

I watched a BBC mini-series over a few nights last week called The Buccaneers. It’s based on the novel of the same name by Edith Wharton. Husband watched the first of five hours with me and then gracefully exempted himself from the remaining four hours.

The Buccaneers is more depressing than Pride and Prejudice, which I love. I was telling Husband about this the night after finishing the movie.

“It’s just so much more depressing. The adultery and unhappy marriages… and the Duke was under so much pressure to produce an heir.”

Husband looked at me, shrugged, and smiled. “Well, I can relate. I’m under tremendous pressure to produce and heir too!”

If you think of it today, and if you’re the praying type, please say a prayer for us! I’m off this afternoon to get a second opinion after my doctor’s appointment of over a month ago (which you can read about here). Please pray that the doctor will be able to accurately assess my physical state and please pray that we will accept whatever news we get with contentment and peace.

Favorite Husband Quote of the Day and Something Learned

Time has gotten away from me again. This is actually my favorite Husband quote from a few days ago, but I still thought it was worth sharing.

I have just finished blow-drying my hair with a diffuser with my head tilted upside-down. I am excited because, in my opinion, the technique had the desired effect of making my wavy-curly hair look more wavy-curly than usual.

I say, “Honey, do you notice anything different about my hair today?”

Husband pauses to carefully consider my appearance. He’s been put in this situation before, poor guy.

“You didn’t have your clippie pin* and… go back!” Husband says, while pantomiming me clipping something at the top of my head and then waving one hand back over his head and down one shoulder.

Translation note:

• four bobby pins

In Husband’s defense, he was right. I usually do use bobby pins to hold back some of my hair. On this particular day I had left my hair entirely down. But he had not noticed the beautiful extra-curliness of my hair that I was so very proud of.

Husband’s interpretation of what I do to my hair on a normal day tickled my funny bone and deflated some of my excitement over my hair, but it also taught me something. Or rather, it reminded me of something that I have learned before and have had to relearn over and over again.

Nobody—and I mean nobody—scrutinizes my physical appearance with as much fervor as I do. I know this is true, and yet I still spend time and energy thinking about and trying to improve my appearance.

I have long been disappointed with myself because of this importance I place on my appearance, and it has proven difficult for me to moderate that down to a healthy desire to look presentable.

I’ve prayed about it. I’ve memorized Bible verses and then taped them up next to my mirror:

“Man looks at the outward appearance, but the Lord looks at the heart.” (1 Sam. 16:7)

“Your beauty should not come from outward adornment, such as braided hair and the wearing of gold jewelry and fine clothes. Instead, it should be that of your inner self, the unfading beauty of a gentle and quiet spirit, which is of great worth in God’s sight. For this is the way the holy women of the past who put their hope in God used to make themselves beautiful.” (1 Peter 3:3-5a)

“Charm is deceptive, and beauty is fleeting; but a woman who fears the Lord is to be praised.” (Prov. 31:30)

I’ve studied abroad in a country where it was neigh impossible to spend time and energy on physical appearance.

And yet.

Still I concern myself with my appearance much, much more than I ought.

But Husband’s words were a good reminder for me.

Favorite Husband Quote of the Day

Setting: I am trying to decide what earrings to wear with the necklace I have on over a turquoise turtleneck in the morning before leaving the house. I have one earring in one ear and a different earring in the other ear. I walk into the kitchen where Husband is cutting up potatoes.

Hillary: Which earrings do you think I should wear with this necklace, honey? I cover my left ear with a hand and let him look. Then I cover the right ear for a few seconds.

Husband: Well, I think they both look nice…. But I would pick the one in your left ear.

Hillary: Thanks. I think that’s what I was going to choose too. I start to walk away and I hear behind me…

Husband: Of course, I really have no idea, but I figured it was safe to give an opinion. By this point, I’m sure you’d have weeded out any ones that would be damaging.

Oh, how I love this man.

Further Fading of the Honeymoon Effect

Even though I’ve been wrestling with some pretty heavy emotions on our weekend get-away, I have also enjoyed myself. Immensely.

On this vacation I was looking forward to:

a) sleeping in

b) shopping for a few clothing items

c) reading for hours

d) watching a movie or two with Wonderful Husband

Check, check, check and check.

On Saturday afternoon, as we were sitting in our suite, I was reminded of our honeymoon, a little over two years ago. I couldn’t help but chuckle, however, because I noticed one key difference. See if you can pick it out.

Here are two photos from the one rainy afternoon we spent in our cabin on our honeymoon:

And here are two more photos from our one afternoon spent in our suite on this little vacation:

Can you see what’s different?

Yep, you got it.

Honeymoon: “I want to be with you all the time! I’m so happy we can finally be together whenever we want! Whatever you’re doing, I want to do too!”

Now: “I love you. I’m glad I’m here with you. You can do what you want, but this is what I want to do right now.”

Don’t get me wrong; we enjoyed each other’s company on this vacation and the pictures, of course, do not show the time we did get to spend laughing and talking and cuddling together.

But isn’t the contrast just kind of funny? While doing premarital counseling and learning about the ‘honeymoon effect’ and how it would wear off between one and two years, I thought, “Never! That just doesn’t sound like fun at all. I want to feel this romantic for my entire marriage.”

Yeah. Suuuuuuure, Hillary.

Movie Choices and the Fading Honeymoon Effect

After two years of marriage, my husband and I are slowly exiting the honeymoon stage. In our courtship, I could pick out any movie to watch of an evening and my husband wouldn't bat an eye. He's gradually becoming more particular, however. I've noticed the change happening for some time, but it was not until I brought home the movie Sabrina that I fully registered what is to come.

Because I didn't just bring home the 1954 version of Sabrina with Audrey Hepburn, but I also brought home the 1995 version of Sabrina with Harrison Ford. I thought it would be fun to watch them back to back and compare the two. I just couldn't imagine Audrey Hepburn and Harrison Ford in a movie together, so I assumed the two versions of the movie would be pretty different.

But when I presented the two copies of Sabrina for my husband's inspection, his face didn't register even the smallest hint of excitement. Throughout our courtship and first years of marriage, I could tell when my husband was genuinely pleased with one of my movie choices and when he was trying to feign some excitement for my sake. His counterfeit interest, however unconvincing, softened the realization that he didn’t want to watch something I had picked out. I was not prepared for a full disclosure of his feelings toward this movie choice, as they played across his face, without the gentling attempt at enthusiasm.

No, he did not want to watch Sabrina. Especially not the version with Audrey Hepburn.

Apparently we have not completely left the honeymoon stage behind us, though, because he did eventually watch Sabrina with me. The one with Harrison Ford.  The Sabrina with Audrey Hepburn went back to the library unwatched. I think he was mostly just curious to see how the rogue pilot and adventurous archeologist would fare in a fully-fledged supremely sappy romance.

Selfishly, I do not feel ready to leave the honeymoon stage of our marriage. Selfishly, I enjoy the fact that my husband will watch movies that I enjoy when we have an evening to ourselves.

But maybe leaving those sentimental selfless days behind us are a good development.

Maybe we’ll watch fewer movies.

An Epilogue to an Anniversary Date

I have been away at a family gathering over the weekend or I would have shared my anniversary date epilogue sooner.

Because our anniversary date was almost a week ago and, frankly, old news, I only bring it up now to brag on the selflessness and patience of my husband.

At the risk of sounding a little bit unstable, I would like to share a secret about my imagination.

Under certain circumstances, it cannot be stopped.

Any combination of these certain circumstances may or may not cause my imagination to run rampant; that’s how tricky it is.

These circumstances are:

1) an event that causes my routine to deviate widely from the norm

2) caffeine overstimulation

3) an intense or scary movie that shatters my fragile nerves

By celebrating our anniversary, all of these conditions were neatly met:

1) I left work early, we got dressed up, and we drove to a far-away neighboring city to celebrate an anniversary.

2) We ate a deliciously heavy piece of chocolate cake filled with chunks of Kaluha chocolate at the restaurant.

3) We decided on our way home to rent and watch a new Redbox movie as a way to relax and enjoy the last few hours of our anniversary celebration.

I’m not even going to say what movie we rented because I know that the majority of people who have seen this movie were most likely not phased by it in the least. Suffice it to say, it was a ‘thinking’ movie.

And when I couldn’t fall asleep later that night because of all of the unwelcome ‘thinking’ my imagination was doing, my husband was patient enough to be woken up at 1:00 in the morning without a fuss and rub my arm for a while to help me relax.

In fact, he had the opportunity to display his exemplary patience and self-sacrifice a second time when he was awoken at 1:00 in the morning the following night by a wife who could not seem to shake the effects of that oh-so-griping Redbox movie.

Yes, I am very, very blessed.

A New Place, A New Anniversary

Monday, August 15, was my two-year wedding anniversary.

My husband was kind enough to plan our anniversary date, even though I didn’t ask him to do the planning in a very gracious way. Because I love Italian food, he made reservations at a nice Italian restaurant in a larger town nearby.

On Tuesday, the designated day to celebrate, we got dressed up and drove 50 miles to this nice Italian restaurant. (Yes, I know I said “nearby.” In rural small-town Iowa, a town 50 miles away still qualifies.)

My husband and I have unconsciously eased into a tradition of taking pictures of each other across the booth when we’re sitting in a restaurant. We often take a picture before food arrives, just after food arrives, and then again while eating. And often we take pictures just of the food. So, after two years of marriage, we have quite a series of booth pictures and food pictures.

Taking our booth pictures on Tuesday night reminded me of just how much our situation has changed in the last year.

When we celebrated our first anniversary last year, we used a five dollar Baker’s Square gift card that I was gifted for some surprisingly unspectacular action… closing a checking account, or something. We purchased pie and coffee and were careful to stay within the five dollars.

The reason we were careful to stay within five dollars was because we were at the moment semi-homeless and definitely jobless. I say semi-homeless because we were staying with my husband’s parents, who had very graciously opened their home to us for a limited amount of time while we tried to find jobs.

For the purpose of this post, I will not explain the reason that my husband and I were simultaneously jobless, but for those of you with overly active imaginations, we had not participated in any illegal or otherwise –unacceptable-on-the-jobsite activity. We had been trying to find jobs for at least two and a half months, and stress had become a constant, though unfriendly, companion.

We tried to make light of our anniversary and enjoy having made it through a year of marriage quite successfully (in our opinions). We had the camera and were busy taking our booth photos when the woman in the booth behind my husband turned around and asked us to stop taking pictures. She was paranoid, she said, and she did not want to be in our pictures.

Consider the tremulous bubble of happiness that I had managed to produce up until this point popped.

I left my key lime pie on the table and rushed off to cry in the bathroom for about fifteen minutes.

We managed to salvage that anniversary date with a walk around a random neighborhood near the Baker’s Square, but all in all, I have hoped ever since that all of my anniversary dates would be better than that one.

Our date was better this year.

We took our booth pictures this year.

We were not interrupted by a paranoid person.

We have a home.

We have jobs.

We are very blessed.

The Current Waiting Situation

This evening I told my husband that I had decided to start a blog. Then I asked him, “What would make people want to read a blog?”

He answered, “Well, people generally read a blog if it has an interesting story to tell or if the writer is especially entertaining.”

Oh dear.

I definitely don’t have an interesting story to tell, so that one’s out the window. And as for being especially entertaining… I truly doubt it.

I would love to be a mommy right now, or very soon, but for one reason or another (sorry, no specifics yet) my husband and I are not parents and do not expect to be parents in the near future. So, the story of this blog, interesting or not, is contentment while waiting. More specifically, it’s what I do with my time while I’m trying to contently wait to have that first little one.

My husband and I live in a small-ish farming town in northwest Iowa. No wait! Don’t leave! Bear with me.

We’ve been married for just shy of two years.

My husband is creative. I think he’d probably be able to make our life sound a whole lot more exciting than me, if he ever had an inclination to write a blog. He spends most of his free time intent upon the laptop that sits on top of our piano, with ear bugs in his ears, composing music. I think his songs are interesting and very well-done, but he would shrug that off, probably thinking that I’m not really qualified to give musical advice.

Even though he loves music, he’s the sort of quiet person who would be incredibly unhappy if he had to lead a workshop on some aspect of music composition and would much prefer to be the anonymous person in the kitchen washing up dishes after the conference lunch was served. (However, if such a conference was to take place, and he was able to go, he would rather attend as a participant than do dishes.)

I would not be happy washing dishes, but nor would I be happy leading a conference. I’m much happier working with children. I spend half of my week as an assistant children’s librarian, leading story time and other kid-meets-book programs and the other half of my week as a children’s programming director at our church. I rest, sometimes uncomfortably, between being wanting to hide my shy timid self away and wanting to get to know every family that comes into our library and church.

I am, however, quite decidedly an introvert, and I spend most of my free time reading, attempting various crafts, or organizing something in our house.

I do trust that God is at work in our lives. Even though the temptation is there to be discontented with our situation just because we don’t have any little ones, I’m attempting to squeeze the most out of my life before children, my life while waiting.